Masura Ibuka was a co-founder of Sony Corp., the Japanese electronics giant whose products entertain millions of people around the world. Ibuka was an imaginative engineer, a perfectionist who helped to create some of Sony's most popular products. Under his technical leadership, Sony introduced the first transistor television set in 1959, the first solid-state videotape recorder in 1961, and the Trinitron TV, launched in 1967.

For more than 40 years, Ibuka and his partner, Akio Morita, developed Sony together, working from adjoining offices to launch dozens of electronic innovations, including the Walkman, the MiniDisc and PlayStation.

The Walkman was the perfect example of their creativity. Morita observed that the young wanted music around them all the time. Ibuka knew that existing portable cassette players were too bulky. The phenomenally successful Walkman solved both problems.

Ibuka was an enthusiastic radio ham from an early age, and studied electrical engineering. He graduated from Waseda University in 1933. During World War II, he managed a measuring instruments company and also took part in a research project on heat-seeking missiles, where he met Morita.

Toward the end of the war, Ibuka began a new business, Tokyo Telecommunications Research Laboratories. Ibuka and Morita incorporated with $500 of capital and seven employees started work in an abandoned department store amid the devastation of early 1946. The company's first innovation, an electric rice cooker, failed, but the pair persevered.

Ibuka was intrigued by the tiny transistor, which consumed very little power. After buying the rights from the U.S., Ibuka and his engineers refined the transistor and launched the pocket-size radio in 1957, which established Sony as market leader and boosted the Japanese consumer electronics industry worldwide.

In addition to his corporate success, Ibuka set up the Sony Fund for Education to promote science in schools. He and his wife had a son and two daughters.